In The Wake: Africatown

In the Wake: Africatown

First Prize, Site 2
Africatown International Design Competition
Mobile, AL, 2023

Commissioned by: M.O.V.E Gulf Coast CDC
Location: Africatown, Mobile, AL
Status: Competition, First Prize
Year: 2023
Team: Jerome Haferd, Gabriel Moyer-Perez, Violet Greenberg, Tiffany Gonzalez, Shadeen Dixon, Suraya Babb, Stephanie McMorran, and Sidnie Ancion

In The Wake”, embraces the multi-layered “in-between” of water and land urbanistically, architecturally, materially, and conceptually. The proposal seeks to tap into the inter-woven histories of both Native and African stewardship of the site, and celebrates both solid (earth) and flowing (woven) design elements that encourage the remediation and co-existence with the natural floodplain ecology. The design concept and elements invoke the “doubleness” of Cudjo Lewis and the Africatown descendents’ identity (“Trees of Two Woods”) in both ancestral and futuristic ways through a “doubling” of ground and building envelope surfaces : the literal layers that define a new relationship to earth and water. The project proposes this “imaginary” for our relationship to the ground, sky, and social plane of Africatown : one that is layered, billowing, and porous.

The Jerome Haferd team, composed almost entirely of designers with African diaspora backgrounds, proposed a new urban design site plan overtop the now razed Josephine Allen site, that interweaves an intentional floodplain with four venues of Site 2 : a new Africatown Museum and adjacent Clotilda Boathouse Archive for the display of a replica of the Clotilda slave ship, as well as design concepts for over 300 units of “maritime housing” to coexist with the aquatic landscape, and finally a ceremonial Gateway of Baptism, which creates a public plaza connecting land and water. “In The Wake” is meant to be a provocation to work with the community to develop this language into a robust urban, iconic, and everyday architecture that is their own.

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